So perhaps Carlos Armesto’s original goal to be a chemical engineer has helped him to succeed as a director.

At ReVision Theatre in Asbury Park, he’s delivered stunning productions of an old rock musical (“The Who’s Tommy”) and a new one (“Kingdom”). Now he goes for his third consecutive hit: “Spring Awakening.” The musical about adolescent angst and sexuality and the consequences of being ill-informed opens on Friday.

Fans of “The Who’s Tommy” were surprised by a big liberty Armesto took with the rock opera. Both in the iconic 1969 rock album and the 1993 Broadway musical adaptation, Captain Walker, assumed dead in the war, came home and wasn’t pleased to see his wife with a character known as Lover. After a struggle, the captain accidentally kills him.

Armesto instead had Lover kill the Captain.

So don’t look for a photocopy of Broadway’s “Spring Awakening.” Says Armesto: “It’s going to have a lot more rage than that production, which I found a little too sweet. The original play on which the musical is based — also called ‘Spring Awakening,’ and written 110 years ago — is angry, twisted, caustic and freaky. I’m tying into that.”

Armesto is dropping the original production’s most controversial concept. For though “Spring Awakening” remained in the 1890s, the characters carried microphones, which they took out of their jacket pockets and used when they sang. “We’ll have microphones,” Armesto says. “We’re just using them in a very different way.”

Theatergoers should anticipate that Duncan Sheik’s music will sound different, too. “It was folk rock on Broadway,” says Armesto. “Here it’ll be rock, rock, rock. I connect to the music of Bon Jovi, Nine Inch Nails and Alanis Morissette.”

He pauses to smile. “Which is kind of funny, because I’m a pretty happy guy.”

So Armesto will be mixing some dangerous artistic chemicals in his production of “Spring Awakening.” But he expected to be dealing with far more literal chemicals as he went through high school. He won some student prizes for his ability in chemistry, and was accepted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, renowned for its science education programs.

And while MIT may be less well-known for its theater department, Armesto found his way into it — although he still quite doesn’t know why.

“When I was a kid, the closest thing to live theater I saw was ‘The Nutcracker,’” he says. “I thought it was the most boring thing in the world.”

Theater was different, however. By his junior year he was carrying two majors — chemical engineering and theater — and directing one-act plays. After he graduated, he chose, to the agony of his parents, to get a master’s degree in directing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

“That’s when I thought I was Julie Taymor,” he says, citing the director who was then flying high with her production of “The Lion King.”

“I did this big musical version of George Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ with masks and puppets and body extensions, and,” he says with a sigh, “I had the most beautiful failure ever.”

Armesto sees a similarity between chemical engineering and directing theater. “The artistic process is the same as the scientific process. You start brainstorming in each until you get an idea that makes you say ‘Eureka!’ It’s all associative and not methodical.”

In his spare time, he tutors high school students in chemistry, biology and physics. Nevertheless, he doesn’t see himself segueing back into his initial career choice.

“I love working at Asbury Park,” he says. “There’s no other town in New Jersey quite like it. You have that great history of rock as well as many wonderful ethnic musicians and the gay sensibility, too. I want all that to keep going along with ReVision.”